Five second identification guide: Dollar General, the biggest dollar store chain in the U.S. Wants to buy Family Dollar, the second-largest chain.

Dollar General is a discount retailer that generally sells items costing less than $10, and plenty of items for less than $1.

If you’re looking for a Dollar General, your best bet is Texas, where it has about 1,200 stores, or more than one in every 10 of its 11,338 American stores. The stores are spread out across 40 states, with the strongest concentrations in the South, Northeast and Midwest.

The company opened 650 new stores in 2013.

It’s the most valuable of the dollar stores, with a market cap of $17.37 billion.

Business is good: in 2013 Dollar General recorded $17.5 billion in sales, with same-store sales up by 3.3%. Same store sales at the company have risen for 24 consecutive years.

Five second identification guide:The second-largest dollar store chain in the U.S. Logo reminiscent of a video game arcade. Subject of a bidding war between Dollar General and Dollar Tree.

Family Dollar sells items ranging in price from less than $1 to $10.

In June, activist investor Carl Icahn announced he had taken a 9.4% stake in the company and said it “should be put up for sale immediately.”

Family Dollar runs 7,963 stores across the U.S., and like Dollar General, its biggest presence is in Texas, home to 1,014 outlets, or almost one in every eight of its stores. It opened 500 new stores in 2013.

Sales of $10.39 billion in 2013, with same store sales up 3%.

Family Dollar currently has a market value of about $8.66 billion. In late July, rival chain Dollar Tree agreed to buy the company for about $8.5 billion; on Monday, Dollar General announced its own bid, valuing the company at about $9 billion.

Five second identification guide:The bright green dollar store where things really do cost a dollar.

Dollar Tree is the third largest of the U.S. discount retail chains, and the only one to stick to the premise of the name: Pretty much everything in its stores costs a dollar or less.

The company runs 4,891 stores in 48 states, and also has about 180 stores in Canada. While its rivals are strongest in the South, and particularly in Texas, you’re most likely to find a Dollar Tree in California, where it had 437 stores as of Feb. 1 this year. In 2013 the company opened 343 new stores.

It has a market cap of about $11.47 billion.

Dollar Tree announced an $8.5 billion deal for Family Dollar in July; that has now been overtaken by a $9 billion bid by Dollar General. The company hasn’t yet responded to the new competing bid. If its deal is broken up by a higher offer, it stands to collect a $305 million termination fee.